Hello Busan!

Hello everyone :D

I had a chance to go to Busan, 2nd biggest city in South Korea, with my mom last Tuesday. Busan is located about 270 miles away from Seoul, and since it was going to be a day trip, we've decided to take KTX, which is a fastest train you can take in Korea. It takes only about 2 1/2 hours to go to Busan from Seoul while it takes about 6 hours to drive there.

 (outside of Seoul Station) 

(inside of Seoul Station)

Mom and I woke up really early and went to Seoul Train Station (one of landmarks in Korea :D) around 7am. Exterior and interior was pretty nice and clean. I was surprised there were a lot of people here early in the morning. I guess a lot of people take trains or subways here.

(a lady was selling homemade kimbap in front of  Seoul Station, so we bought one. It was really delicious)

We had 15 - 20 minutes until the train leaves, so we went to McDonald's and bought a cup of coffee to drink while eating kimbap. I kind of felt guilty for eating outside food inside, but whatever, I like kimbap more than instant food anyways.

(interior view of the train. we were in regular seats)

(red bean paste was pretty sweet. i like one i had at actual city way more)

I guess kimbap wasn't enough for us to fill our appetite. We bought Kyoung Joo bread (bread filled with red bean paste inside) and ate almost half of them on the way to Busan. Oh yeah! I saw Bronwyn from 미녀들의 수다 (Global Talk Show) while I was looking for a seat. She was talking to one of workers to ask something. She was prettier in real life +_+

(Busan Station looked similar to Seoul Station for me)

We arrived at Busan Station around 11am I think. We headed over to this museum called 'Trick Eye Gallery' which was about 20 minutes away from the station to watch the show. 

(some of photos I took at the museum, my mom refused to take photos except twice)

This museum is pretty much taking a picture that's supposed to give you an illusion when you take photos. I think my mom didn't really understand what to do or I was just really bad at taking a pose. It was pretty fun experience, but I think 12,000 won (about 10 dollars) was a bit too much to pay for these. I think kids who were there had a lot of fun though. I had fun overall too, but I thought it they would have more fun stuff. Maybe Seoul one have better stuff? Not sure. 

After the short tour, we went to eat lunch near the gallery. Oh man, food was just horrible. I was able to taste MSG. EWW. It wasn't that delicious and there weren't a lot of fish pieces inside of soup. 

We headed over to the hospital after the lunch. Main reason we came to Busan was because mom had to go to funeral service. She was supposed to go with 2 of her co-workers, but since KTX tickets were really expensive (it's about 50 dollars one way) they decided to not go and just have mom go there and since she didn't want to go by herself, she tagged me along. While I was waiting for my mom to end service, I went to 'A Twosome Place' cafe and ordered a cup of coffee and started to doodle. (Picture will be posted in my illustration blog after I finish this) I met with my mom about an hour after and we took a bus to head over to 해운대 (Hae Un Dae)

 (panorama view of Haeundae)

(top and bottom picture have very different view, but these pictures were taken at one spot)

Hae Un Dae is a beach area. A lot of tourists come during summer and swim and get tanned during summer. Since it's winter, we enjoyed a view of winter beach instead. I wish weather was warmer so I could stay longer, but...it was COLD. After we took some photos, we went to Nurimaru APEC House, where APEC meeting was held back in 2005.

 (exterior view of Nurimaru APEC House)

 (interior view of Nurimaru APEC House, panorama picture)

(picture located as soon as you enter the main gate)

Nurimaru was smaller than I thought, but the interior design was pretty nice. They combined the design with Korean traditional style to it. There were old Korean written on the wall and some of photos were nice too. Inside where the meeting was held had a blind door that could be slide opened (I think) to see the outside view.
We walked to outside and went opposite way from where we came from. We took a bus and headed over to 자갈치시장.


자갈치시장 (Ja Gal Chi Market) is the largest seafood market, and it's one of areas that I like to go because you can eat fresh seafood if you want. Mmmmm!

 (HUGE octopus)

 (whale meat......not sure if I want to try this ever)

(fried fishcake! it was SO DELICIOUS......I WANT MORE!!)

I wish I was able to buy some of fish from here, sigh. A lot of fish looked so fresh and delicious....and BIG. I wanted to walk more, but it was getting so windy, so we went to one of restaurants to eat sashimi.

(mmmm....sashimi......)

Mom said it's not as fresh as you can eat next to a market, but they don't have a lot of side dishes like restaurants like this. I still liked it though :D Side dishes were good too. We stayed at the restaurant for over an hour so we can relax before we head back to Busan Station.

We still had some time before we leave, so we crossed the street to go to Arirang Street? Where Busan Internation Film Festival happens. Arirang Street is like Myoung Dong in Seoul; there were a lot of stores and a lot of people. People came out to shop and eat. We had 어묵꼬치 (fishcake) and walked around for a bit and decided to try this 호떡 (hodduk, fried bread with sugar inside.) This street booth had a LONG line so we decided to try this booth. We waited almost 10 minutes to eat this thing.

 (waiting on line to get a hodduk)

 

(making hodduk)

(inside of hodduk)

I think people like this hodduk because first, they use brick size of butter instead of oil to fry hodduk and second, they put nuts inside of hodduk. Each hodduk costed 900 won, about 85 cents. We bought 2 and took it to Busan Station. We ate them with a cup of coffee while waiting for train time. It tasted really good, but I ended up getting diarrhea. Sigh. I guess my stomach isn't used to greasy food anymore. Umm, yay? xD

Overall, I enjoyed this day trip. I wish we went a day before to go around more, but we had fun. We got exhausted on the way back to Seoul so we knocked out.

I want to go on another trip! Maybe I can plan a day trip by myself once I'm done with website design and other design work by March or April. Hmm.

It's past 12:30am now. I should go to sleep soon. I will post about my another happy event I had on 3rd (Friday) soon!


Good night!